Computer Simulation Studies of Solids

PROLOGUE Computers influence our lives in more ways than we care to admit, and simulation or modeling is just one facet of a vast activity that will inevitably continue to grow even larger. Nowadays, computer simulation is used routinely in fields as diverse as econometrics and meteorology. The successes that have been achieved to date are such that, whatever the field of application, a healthy scepticism is warranted in assessing the predictions based upon any particular computer model. In this respect, computer studies on real systems, be they solid or liquid, have much in common with the modeling of the economy or the weather. That is, although in principle one can now obtain numerical results, we cannot thereby evade the question of how faithfully the model mimics reality. I devote this article to the recent advances in the modeling of condensed matter, with particular emphasis on the properties of solids and the structural transitions that can arise with changes in temperature and pressure. I am not concerned here with exact numerical studies of mathematical models, which is an autonomous field of endeavour. Rather, I concentrate instead on the study of atoms and molecules that interact with what are believed to be realistic potentials. The degree of simplification in the modeling is necessarily related to the complexity of the system of interest. Computer simulation in statistical mechanics dates from the very birth of